This article is part of The Quint's Special Project – 'Suicide Mat Karna Bas': Inside The Kota Crisis. Click here to support us to bring you more such important stories.
(Trigger Warning: Discussions of suicide.)
“A few days ago, we received a call from a girls’ hostel. A girl had been talking to her family on call and minutes after putting the phone down, she died by suicide. Some of her friends saw and called us. But we couldn’t save her.”
This is what Meena Verma, Head Constable, Kota Police, tells The Quint on Monday, 11 December. She is still reeling under this feeling of helplessness, of not knowing what more she could have done to save the minor's life.
Verma is part of the Kota Police’s initiative to help students in the infamous coaching factory. At least 29 students have lost their lives in Kota this year – the highest in at least eight years.
Instituted on 24 June this year, the ‘Student Cell’ is an eight-member team of the Kota Police, trying to put a check on the the number of suicides. The Quint brings to you an inside view of how the team works.
‘Juggling Between Helpline Calls & Field Visits’
The 'Student Cell' has two major tasks. The first one is answering the calls received on the 24x7 helpline number – 9530442778. The second is making field visits to at least 8 to10 hostels, PGs, or messes each day to meet students, wardens, etc.
The eight team members are assigned these roles in alternative shifts.
Chandrasheel Thakur, Additional SP and in-charge of the cell, tells The Quint:
“On our helplines, we receive calls from students related to a bunch of issues. We try to resolve them by alerting the concerned departments. We have a 72-hour compliance period within which we try to resolve all the problems.”
And what problems do students contact the cell with? According to Sanju Sharma, Assistant Sub-Inspector, the students usually call with complaints about:
Unhygienic food in the mess
Hostels not returning security money
Female students being eve-teased
Sharma adds that they receive about 25-30 calls each day, out of which 1-2 are usually of students struggling with depression or anxiety.
Earlier this month, Thakur told PTI that in September and October, the helpline received 373 calls, with 35 of them being related to depression.
Sharma says:
“Students feel low when they score less marks in the weekly tests. Their parents pressure them because so many of them come from poor families, their families have taken loans, sold their farmland, mortgaged their houses, etc. So, students feel distressed very often.”
On receiving any distress situation calls, the team tries to reach the student’s location within 10 minutes and give them “primary counselling,” says Sharma.
If they think that the situation is “serious,” they connect the student to a psychologist or a psychiatrist.
But the team doesn’t have any in-house professional mental health experts.
Thakur says, “We are in touch with local psychiatrists and psychologists who we reach out to if there’s a need.”
Dr Surbhi Goyal, one such psychotherapist that the Student Cell often reaches out to, tells The Quint, "Their team connects me with 4-5 students every month over call. The problems with most students are not major, they just need someone to talk to. Sometimes, it is complicated and the student just wants to leave Kota, so I counsel them and ask their parents to take them home."
However, Dr Goyal goes on to add that with a lot of students, it's "just superficial depression." She says that the students who actually need help never reach out because of the "immense pressure on them."
"The problem is that a lot of parents tell their children – ya to kuch kar ke aana ya wapas mat aana (Either do something worthwhile or don't come back)."Dr Surbhi Goyal, Psychotherapist
The On-Ground Work
Apart from answering the helplines, the team also makes field visits to meet students in Kota.
Thakur says that the police officers meet hostel staff, PG owners, wardens, and mess workers too and educate them on “identifying red flags in students.” He tells The Quint:
“As the primary responders or gatekeepers, we tell the staff to look for behavioural changes in students – if they’re eating on time, if they’re grooming themselves, if they’re skipping classes, if they’re not talking to their parents, etc."
He goes on to add, "We also have a campaign called Darwaze Pe Dastak through which wardens are encouraged to knock on the students' doors every night and talk to them to see if they’re doing okay. Wardens are also encouraged to speak to parents every week.”
On the other hand, Verma shares that coaching staff members are advised not to segregate children according to ranks or shame them in class, but it inevitably keeps happening.
She laments, “So many student suicides happen on the weekends because that’s when the weekly answer sheets are sent to the kids and the parents.”
But when it comes to the students themselves, that takes some coercing on the part of the officers to get them to open up.
The ‘Student Cell’, when out on field visits, doesn’t wear their uniform for this reason. To build trust, the officers even give their personal phone numbers to students in case of emergency, they say.
Where Does The Cell Lag?
But, even though the team’s spirit to help is intact, there are some snags visible through the cracks.
There is no follow-up mechanism for either the students or the cell. This is a clear lag, especially for those students who might be struggling with depression or anxiety.
Thakur says, “Once we connect the student with a counsellor for primary care, we don’t follow up with them.”
A team of eight is not enough to help lakhs of students in Kota. Both Verma and Sharma confide that they’ve raised this issue several times, but no heed has been paid to the strength of the team.
Verma sighs, “We have the helpline, the field visits, and we receive letters from students and their parents too. We want to help them but we aren’t able to focus on each child individually.”
No training has been given to any of the team members on how to handle crisis situations with children if they ever witness one. Verma casually mentions that Thakur once taught them the red flags that they should identify in kids. But that’s been the extent of any training.
Sharma, on the other hand, says:
“For the team, they selected people over 40-45 years of age, and mostly women who have children around the same ages as these students, so that we can talk to them like their mothers only. Police mein har cell ke liye alag training thodi hoti hai aur zaroorat kya hai, motivate hi to karna hai. (Police officers don’t have training for each cell, and what’s the need, we only have to motivate the students).”
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